“The Face Is the Road Map”: Vietnamese Amerasians in U.S. Political and Popular Culture, 1980–1988Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2011-02-28 21:34Z by Steven |
“The Face Is the Road Map”: Vietnamese Amerasians in U.S. Political and Popular Culture, 1980–1988
Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume 14, Number 1 (February 2011)
pages 33-68
E-ISSN: 1096-8598; Print ISSN: 1097-2129
Jana K. Lipman, Assistant Professor of History
Tulane University
During the 1980s, U.S. politicians and the media presented Vietnamese Amerasians as quintessential Americans who could be brought home rather than as foreigners or as immigrants. However, Amerasians were non-white immigrants and their rights to enter the United States intertwined with debates over immigration restriction and the ongoing search for American Prisoners of War. The popular emphasis on Amerasians’ American “look” resulted in a discourse which valued whiteness, and sometimes blackness, at the expense of Vietnamese mothers and Asian identities. This article argues how Amerasian immigration policies re-inscribed hierarchies of race and sexuality grounded in the history of Asian exclusion.
Read or purchase the article here.